‘Facts of Life’ Star in New ‘Survivor’ Cast
Who says acting careers are being hurt by reality shows? Lisa Whelchel, who played the peppy Blair Warner on “The Facts of Life” in the 1980s, is back on TV…
MTV Tries Another British Adaptation, ‘The Inbetweeners’
MTV hasn’t had any better luck adapting British hit series than network television has. Their version of “Skins” sank like a stone. Now here comes their version of another raunchy…
Actually, ‘Copper’ is Rather Tinny
BBC America has a long history of bringing over the best of British television, in comedy or drama. So it’s a bit of a disappointment that their first original American…
Go Ahead, Larry King
Larry King was such a fixture on CNN, he almost left a suspenders-wearing shadow when he left with considerable fanfare in 2010. Piers Morgan hasn’t come close to matching his…
Peace Laureates Want End to ‘Stars Earn Stripes’
Nine Nobel Peace laureates know warmongering when they see it, so they sent a letter to NBC this week, urging it to cancel its new reality series “Stars Earn Stripes,”…
‘Parks and Rec’ Invades ‘Newsroom’
It was surprising enough that Paul Schneider, the former Mark Brendanawicz on “Parks and Recreation,” popped up this week on “Newsroom” as the hand-picked magazine profile writer of Will McAvoy…
Military Propaganda via Reality Show
Most reality shows are just dumb but “Stars Earn Stripes” (NBC, 8 p.m.) is almost maliciously bad, built on deceptive premises blown up to a jingoistic, action film level with…
NBC’s History of British Rock: No Kinks, No Kate Bush
NBC has already altered Olympic reality enough to make you think beach volleyball is a much greater sport than dozens of others (dominated by foreigners) who never made their prime…
Hutterites in a Huff
One of my favorite series this summer, readers will know, is the oddball reality series from National Geographic, “American Colony: Meet the Huttterites.” The unusual, German-speaking sect of Protestants in…
W. Kamau Bell’s Fresh Comedy
Russell Brand’s stab at nearly-live topical monologue on late night cable sort of went off the rails as he floundered for topics and relevance (it will be retooled by the…